This Sunday we welcome Eric Angelo Bessel to MailTape for a meditative morning. Based in Portland, the composer joins us just after the release of his album, Mirror at Night (as well as the most recent release of the album’s B-Sides !).
Guest’s selection
Faten Kanaan - Alcoyana-Capri
Eric Angelo Bessel : ” I feel a quiet affinity with Faten Kanaan and the way she holds structure and intuition in delicate balance. Her pieces often begin with simple, repeating figures that slowly unfurl, revealing emotional depth through the gentlest shifts in harmony and texture. There’s a restraint in her work that feels generous—meaning is allowed to surface in its own time, without insistence. I’m especially compelled by her use of analog synthesizers, where each tone carries a distinct presence, as if shaped by hand. It reinforces my sense that instruments don’t just voice a piece, but help define its character. Her music holds a quiet clarity while still inviting mystery, a balance I find myself continually reaching toward. “
Cécile Seraud - Pen Er Malo
Eric Angelo Bessel : ” A similar connection emerges in the music of Cécile Seraud, shaped by the openness and sensitivity of her approach. Her work breathes—formed as much by silence as by sound—allowing each note to linger, to resonate, before gently dissolving into the next. I’m moved by the way she weaves classical sensibility with a cooler, more atmospheric melancholy, echoing the intimate stillness of Daigo Hanada and the expansive, drifting horizons of Sigur Rós, yet remaining entirely her own. There’s an honesty in how she captures fleeting emotional states—subtle, unguarded, and precise—that I continually seek in my own work. “
The Stranger - About To Enter A Strange New Period
Eric Angelo Bessel : ” I’m deeply engaged by the sonic world that James Leyland Kirby shapes on Watching Dead Empires in Decay under his pseudonym The Stranger. The album unfolds in shifting, unstable layers—shuffling rhythms, industrial murmurs, fragments of found and electronic sound—at once mechanical and eerily alive. It gently destabilizes the listening space, as if the ground itself were in motion, yet beneath it all there’s a faint, persistent emotional current. I’m fascinated by this interplay of shadow and warmth, where sound carries both weight and fragility. Moments seem to gather into something recognizable—a rhythm, a trace of melody—only to slip back into abstraction. The result feels elusive yet deeply human, an immersive, transformative experience that closely echoes my own instincts as a composer. “
Curator’s selection
Eric Angelo Bessel - Double Helix
Sarah : ” Eric Angelo Bessel describes his creative process as one tied to the morning. In those moments, the veil of dreams is still braided in some haze over our heads. One mesh leads into the next, one gauzy expanse envelopes another. The resulting tracks are experimentations in this delicate wandering. Although Double Helix appears on Mirror at Night B-Sides, it is at once part of the world of the preceding album and a bridge elsewhere. As with each of Eric Angelo Bessel’s releases, the track’s layering into topographies of texture are guided by the composer’s meticulous experimentation with analog synths and pedals, carefully rousing the emotional undercurrents hidden within the otherwise industrial gestures. “
Kangding Ray - Nacht und Tag
Sarah : ” Absolutely enchanted by the playfulness of these synth melodies against the drones, treading ever so carefully but picking up momentum. Still, the synths flutter over this expanse, offering something lighter “
Anastasia Kristensen - Magpie Song
Sarah : ” Really enjoying this conversation of bird calls with the slightly more heavy garage synths and percussives, evolving into some broader all-consuming swell and then breaking apart the next moment. It makes me remember running for the first trains in the daybreak, listening to the birds after the techno from the night (morning) before. As the folklore goes, we must always remember to nod and say Hello Mr. Magpie should one cross our path ;) “
Eric Angelo Bessel - Tendons
Sarah : ” Am so caught on this track in Mirror at Night, the opening number to the album. I find myself going back to it over and over, and it’s what we’ll leave you with this morning. Strange mechanical phantoms connecting to each other, somehow both industrial and overwhelmingly intimate. Eric Angelo Bessel describes how this track was made following a particularly jarring physical accident, where for months afterward he was struck by strange pangs and twitches in his legs. He described feeling inspired by these strange, almost alchemical movements his body underwent in the dark to repair itself. This strange magic joins us in the track, its own kind of healing. ”
That’s all for this morning :) thank you for listening with us ! Our love to Eric Angelo Bessel for this very thoughtful, energising selection. Thank you to Noémie Dijon for this episode’s wonderful artwork. Until next time :)
